Author Archive | Todd Zywicki

From today’s Cleveland Plain-Dealer: This is why so many job-starved Clevelanders have voiced concerns. Consider the coalition that is building: civil rights groups, elected officials, labor unionists, ministers, small business owners, and, most recently, Cleveland bloggers. We raise our voices in opposition because of the negative effects of a Wal-Mart Supercenter on our town. In […]

Hard-hitting article in Scientific American raises some serious questions about the existence and implications of the obesity “epidemic.”

Terrific editorial in the Washington Post today beautifully summarizes the case for CAFTA. Opening paragraph: NOBODY IS saying that the proposed free-trade deal with Central America and the Dominican Republic will work miracles. Yes, regional free-trade deals boost prosperity much less than global ones. Yes, free trade by itself is not a wonder cure for […]

Honestly, the only reason I ever gave a damn about the Huffington Post (except now that Eugene is there occasionally) was because I thought that Larry David would be hilarious as a blogger. And I thought his first post on Bolton was quite funny. But as far as I can tell, that was his only […]

Eugene notes Geoff Stone’s column on the challenges facing liberalism. Stone correctly notes that conservatives in the 1970s (actually beginning with the New Deal) were equally adrift, but that a “movement” was born from the ashes. How this came about is a fascinating story that I won’t retell here (one source I have previously recommended […]

In the midst of an otherwise insightful column on the demise of sportsmanship, Burt Prelutsky has this clunker: Those days [of Bobby Jones and good sportsmanship] seem very long ago. Since then, we’ve seen the canonization of Vince Lombardi, whose inane comment that “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” has come to be regarded […]

Insightful article in the Washington Times today about the agreement between the states and “Big Tobacco” to cartelize the cigarette industry, generate oligopoly rents for the big tobacco companies, and use the power of the government to stomp out competition by smaller companies that would otherwise underprice them.

My colleague Alex Tabarrok notes that since the 1870s, forestation in Vermont has risen from 20% to 85%. He correctly notes that part of this is tremendous increases in agricultural productivity, reducing the need for farm land. Don’t forget, however, the effect of the invention of cars, which dramatically reduced demand for horses–and the need […]

The Onion has the story.

Peter Berkowitz reviews the new book by Donald Alexander Downs, Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus, in Policy Review.

The daughter of Harvard’s Math Department Chair throws down the gauntlet. A response here.

Congratulations to Maureen Ohlhausen, my former Deputy Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the FTC, and Acting Director since my departure last summer, who has just officially been named Director of OPP. FTC Chair Debbie Majoras had this to say about Maureen: “Maureen is a champion of free markets and competition, and her […]

Laurie David comments on Japan’s decision to adopt “casual summer” in order to fight global warming: The very next day, the New York Times ran an article about the chairman of Toyota Motor, Japan’s largest company, bucking tradition in the name of reducing global warming — announcing that all Toyota employees are to leave their […]

A friend just put me onto American Rhetoric, a nifty website which contains audio of many important speeches in American history (and discussions of rhetoric more generally). The site lists the Top 100 American speeches here (with audio provided for most of them).

Enlightening article today on NRO by my former (at the FTC) and current (at GMU) colleague, Jerry Ellig, on the strange political bedfellows involved in the wine case (an observation that I made here awhile back as well).